It won’t make the front page of many big papers or lead the nightly news, but Congress is taking real steps forward in reforming the way we spend your tax dollars.

For too long the federal budgeting process has been dysfunctional and dishonest. A combination of faux-savings, gimmicks and loopholes has created a system where Washington is predisposed to spend more money each year. My freshman class was sent to Washington to shake up the system, restore accountability and stop spending money we don’t have. And while we have made progress by changing the conversation from “How much can we spend?” to “How much can we cut?” there’s more to be done.

We are attacking business as usual on multiple fronts. In the Senate, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions has introduced legislation to strengthen the Senate’s rules against budget trickery. I along with my friend Marthy Roby from Alabama and 27 members of the freshman class are taking up the effort in the House.

Our bill, the Honest Budget Act of 2012, a nine-part legislative package that will remove some of the smoke and mirrors in the budgeting process that, since 2005, have cost taxpayers more than $350 billion. Our bill tightens the process for adding “emergency” and “disaster” designation to spending measures, an often-abused method where members tack on more spending to legitimate bills; establishes a new scoring rule that would prohibit the use of timing shifts for the purpose of producing phony budget savings; prevent scoring rescissions of budget authority as savings unless they produce actual cash savings in the budget window; and make it harder to move appropriation bills unless a budget resolution is already in place.

In addition to the Honest Budget Act, I am working with my colleagues on the House Budget Committee on a number of bills that would reform our budget process. Of the ten bills we introduced, two just passed the House this month. The first, called the Baseline Budgeting Act erases the pro-spending bias that exists in the baseline we use as a starting point in federal budgeting. Currently, an automatic increase is added for inflation each year in the discretionary budget. This means that each year, Congress assumes that each agency needs more money than last year. With this bill, the baseline will now show the previous year’s funding level. This would put an end to the claim that providing the same level of funding as last year can be mischaracterized as a spending cut.

Additionally, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act would require the Congressional Budget Office to provide lawmakers with a macroeconomic impact analysis for all major legislation. While the CBO must provide an analysis on the fiscal impact of all legislation reported from committee, there is no systematic requirement for analysis of the economic impact of legislation. This bill would keep Congress more honest when claiming a bill would create or kill jobs, and give us more information on the impact of the bills we pass.

After a year of budget fights and feeling like the deck was stacked against us, we are now changing how the system works. None of these bills are the “silver bullet” that will everything in the process, but they are meaningful reforms that will make government more honest. And wouldn’t that be a nice change.